Times and neighborhood news sites partner up

The Seattle Times and several of the city’s most popular neighborhood news sites have formed a partnership to explore new and better ways to collaborate in a rapidly changing news ecosystem, the paper and sites announced today.

The partnership acknowledges the growing spread and significance of neighborhood news and allows the sites to remain independent while benefiting from a closer relationship with Seattle’s largest news organization.

The specifics are vague, but that’s part of the point.

“This is about a kind of memorandum of understanding,” said Justin Carder of Capitol Hill Seattle and neighborhood news network Neighborlogs. “It’s not like we change our business model and have the Times masthead on our sites. We get to keep doing what we’ve been doing.”

Overseen by American University’s J-Lab, the partnership is being funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Carder would not disclose the exact amount each site would receive, but said it was enough for him to buy a new camera and pay a bit more to Capitol Hill Seattle’s contributors.

The partnership includes two of Seattle’s first independent neighborhood news reporters, Carder and Tracy Record of West Seattle Blog, as well as Kate Bergman of the booming MyBallard and Next Door Media neighborhood sites and Amber Campbell of the Rainier Valley Post.

As a result of the partnership, readers of the Times and the neighborhood sites might see more links to other partners’ stories, as well as the sharing of photos, online features and story sources and news tips.

The Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer, the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times and TucsonCitizen.com are also participating in the nationwide pilot program.

Carder hopes the partnership can help cultivate more fertile ground for more citizens who want to report on their neighborhood with an authentic voice and grow a business. Like many of Seattle’s independent neighborhood sites, Carder’s turns a profit.

In their announcements of the partnership, both Record of West Seattle Blog and Bergman of MyBallard praised the Times’ effort to collaborate rather than compete.

KOMO-TV and seattlepi.com have both launched their own neighborhood news sites.

“The vast majority of stories originate from our readers, and now some of the best stories will be linked from Seattle’s largest news site,” wrote Cory Bergman in MyBallard. “We’re very pleased that the Times has chosen to work together with organic, neighborhood-grown news sites instead of creating competing efforts designed to draw advertising dollars away from the neighborhood.”